TEHRAN, Iran: Iran has sentenced two internationally renowned Iranian AIDS physicians to six and three years in prison for their alleged participation in a U.S.-backed plot to overthrow Iran's Islamic system, their lawyer said Thursday.
The attorney, Masoud Shafii, said authorities notified him this week of the sentences handed to the two physicians and brothers. Arash and Kamyar Alaei were convicted over the weekend of allegedly taking part in a U.S.-backed plot to overthrow Iran's authorities. The lawyer said he would appeal.
The prosecution of Alaei brothers raised an outcry among international human rights groups.
Two other unnamed persons were sentences with the doctors but their identities or length of prison terms unknown.
The whole trial which took place Dec. 31 in a closed-door court has been shrouded in secrecy and the lawyer said the judge only "allowed me to take note from their verdicts on Tuesday."
The Alaeis were convicted under an Iranian law that envisages that anyone cooperating with a foreign "hostile" government against Iran could be sentenced to between one to 10 years in prison.
However, only the Supreme National Security Council is "authorized to define whether the U.S. is hostile," said the lawyer. The Council had not done so and the brothers' activities "were not against Iran," he added.
But the lawyer refused to elaborate since legally he was not allowed to reveal the content of a verdict.
On Monday, the official IRNA news agency quoted an unnamed intelligence official as saying Arash and Kamyar Alaei were convicted of taking part in a U.S.-backed plot to overthrow Iran's ruling establishment.
The official said the Alaeis tried to create a social crisis, and stir up street demonstrations and ethnic disputes in Iran.
The Massachusetts-based Physicians for Human Rights in an e-mail Wednesday to The Associated Press expressed deep concern over Alaeis purported confessions, which the group said were used by Iranian authorities to convict them.
The confessions may have been forcibly extracted, PFHR warned.
Numerous medical and scientific organizations have publicly called for the release of the brothers, held in Evin prison just north of Tehran since late June 2008.
According to a press release Wednesday from the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, the mother of Alaei brothers told a local news Web site, Rooz Online, that her sons were held for 63 days in solitary confinement and that she feared that they might be tortured to coerce false confessions on camera.
The charges against the Alaeis are similar to those Iran made against four Iranian-Americans in 2007, including academic Haleh Esfandiari. Those four were imprisoned or had their passports confiscated for several months until they were released and allowed to return to the U.S. They all denied the allegations.
The Alaeis ran a clinic in Tehran and HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention programs in Iran, focusing particularly on at risk sectors like prostitutes and drug users. They also traveled extensively to international conferences on AIDS, and Kamyar Alaei was pursuing a doctorate at the SUNY Albany School of Public Health in Albany, New York.
Critics say the Alaeis' case is the latest instance of the hard-line government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad targeting Iranians with Western connections, depicting them as tools for an American campaign to overthrow the Islamic republic.
The prosecution of the Alaeis appears to have more to do with their contacts with the United States than with their AIDS work.
Tension between the Washington and Tehran has been high in recent years over Iran's nuclear program and Tehran's alleged arming of Shiite militias in Iraq.